I want to have a small & cheap PC that I can bring along with me easily. No, I don't need a laptop. I have monitors, kb and mouse at my desired locations. Just a simple PC for net surfing, 1080p YouTube and file transfer via USB sticks.

I plan to buy a Raspberry Pi5 (run PiOS with desktop environment). Reddit discussion says a Pi5 is overpriced because a mini PC with intel N100 beat it easily. I checked shopee and AliExpress. N100 PC price is a lot higher than a 4/8GB Pi5 with power brick and 32GB card. Some may argue the extra power of N100 but I don't need that at all. N95 price is more friendly but still a lot higher than a Pi5 setup.

what do you think?

regarding 1080p yt, redditor said:
"The Pi 5 is a very bad choice to watch 1080p (or higher) YT. You can try to use the h264ify plugin (h264 uses less CPU), as the Pi 5 has no hardware acceleration for VP9, nor AV1."


This post has been edited by Skylinestar: Oct 7 2025, 02:27 PM

only high end Samsung has Dex. I'm using budget A series.

already knew this for a long time. used it on my RM999 Honor V20 (with full desktop experience). unfortunately industry decided that nobody used cable anymore for data transfer and therefore almost all phones have stupidly slow USB2.

but no Intel box as cheap as Pi5 4GB + psu + 32GB card + heatsink fan.